In Accordance With the Prophecy

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

I remember being an intern. No, really, I do. Your life is fraught with a lack of direction and importance. Though, if you are anything like I was, you have an inflated sense of importance and a misty eyed view of the change you will make on the world. A puppy dog enthusiasm for work. My, how things change....and yet how they stay the same.

We have an intern. I'll call him Mike though that isn't his real name. He just graduated in December from an expensive local university. From what I can tell, he didn't study anything remotely related to what we do. That's okay, I mean, you're talking to a liberal arts grad who was an English major and spent her last year of school explaining that, no, she didn't plan on being an elementary school teacher. I am pretty sure he doesn't even have an interest in what we do. Not that he's not enthusiastic about it. Apparently, he got the job because one of our vice presidents is friends with his dad. Rumor had it that he had met him on a plane flying back from Egypt. As it turns out, this isn't the case, though Mike did travel to the Middle East during a study abroad stint. But you know how rumors can be. Anyway, Mike's interests really lie in international development. We do nothing remotely close.

None of this is of any consequence because every time Mike comes in, he has nothing to do, international development related or otherwise. There's no coordination on what he'll be working on, so he constantly has to ask what to do. I recognize that lost look in his eyes. He eagerly goes from office to office with a legal pad and pen asking if we have anything for him to work on. Problem is that we have no work. I personally hoard work that is ridiculous for me to do at my level. I almost wish I could appropriate him for my own needs. Like, "Hey, Mike, would you mind taking this dry cleaning in and maybe figuring out for me where I should go to buy coffee...maybe do a cost benefit analysis of it?" Or "Would you mind trimming these photos of my family Christmas vacation to 3 inches by 4 inches and pasting them in this scrapbook?"

I somehow think that in an office with an ever-shrinking number of staff members, it wouldn't go unnoticed. He just quietly left a few minutes ago...I gave him a little wave. Poor guy.

I have decided to resurrect my old blog. I have another covering all the minutia of my daily life, which is more personal. This blog's won't be impersonal, per se, but I plan to write more composed thoughts about funny things that happen in workaday life.

I started this blog back when I didn't even know what a blog was. Things have changed dramatically. It's been (gulp) 5 or 6 years since I wrote anything here. Now everyone has one. And they tweet. And they use Facebook. I hope to make this blog about the poor working stiff. (And in that way, it will be personal, because I am that).

Back when I began this blog, it's almost as if I prophesied what I'd eventually be writing about. I got this name from a joke I used to make with a friend (who stopped talking to me actually awhile back...so this blog has lasted longer than our friendship). We would end things "In Accordance With the Prophecy" which we got from an email forward about how to make your coworkers crazy.

Fast forward 6 years. No longer have that friend. Have now been in the working stiff world for nearly 13 years. Have realized that some people don't NEED a list of how to make their coworkers crazy. Have joined a humongous corporation which really highlights how ridiculous modern office life is.

It's all really too good not to share. A lot of this is stuff that made Office Space so funny...which is why I chose to put that picture (for now) up above. I expect to tweak the design as I go.